500 SIR H. H. HOWORTH OJST THE SHINGLE-BEDS [Aug. 1895,. 



where the beds are more protected, it is rarely that anything more 

 than casts are found,' * and also the conclusion that this shingle was 

 laid down in a sea extending as far as the North of Belgium. 



It seems to me strange, if such complete decalcification took 

 place in other areas, that it did not also remove the shells in East 

 Anglia, and the conclusion which I have presented is not only in 

 agreement with the facts, but simplifies the problem greatly. 



The shingle is a true drift, and when it was driven over the Crag- 

 beds of East Anglia and tore up their surfaces, as we can see them 

 torn in many places on the cliffs, it took up in some limited localities 

 portions of the Crag-beds containing adventitious stones, in some 

 cases pockets and layers of sand, and in some cases also Crag shells, 

 and it is a mistake to fix any special horizon for them by means of 

 these shells or stones. 



The next question is, where were the Eocene beds whose disinte- 

 gration has given rise to the shingle ? We can hardly doubt that 

 Eocene beds cover the Chalk in all the eastern part of Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, and Essex, and it would seem almost certain that they once 

 covered the Chalk as far west as the Chalk Escarpment, including 

 West Norfolk and Suffolk, Cambridge, and Hertford, with con- 

 tinuous beds. Also that the various shingle-beds, from the Bure 

 Valley to High Beech in Essex, which have been correlated together 

 as the Westleton Beds or the Pebbly series, are the result of the 

 disintegration and denudation of the former Tertiary covering of 

 this Chalk area, and that the pebbles have drifted from the west 

 eastwards. 



The next point is, what was the force that moved this gravel 

 from its original position farther west and drove it over the Crag- 

 beds of Eastern East Anglia? Spreading it out irrespective of 

 the contour of the country, and notably on its higher ground, piling 

 it up in some places to great depths, and doing this in most singular 

 fashion, as for instance on the hill on which South wold itself 

 stands. 



Some brave men who see ice everywhere, and who have appa- 

 rently never troubled themselves to enquire what ice as a physical 

 agent can actually do and what it is doing, have attributed the 

 distribution of this shingle to land-ice. How a glacier could pos- 

 sibly move about with sheets and masses of gravel made up of loose 

 and slippery stones, and deposit them in this fashion I know not. 

 So far as I know, the shingle is everywhere a true shingle. It 

 contains no far-travelled stones at all ; it contains no large stones 

 at all; and the only piece over 1 foot in diameter which has 

 ever been discovered in it is a lump of micaceous quartzite 

 found by Mr. Whitaker at Easton, wedge-shaped, and measuring 

 13 x 13 x 19| inches. This seems to me to have been undoubtedly 

 derived from the Crag. The shingle-beds are often rudely stratified 

 and false-bedded, a condition of things inconsistent with deposition 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Vol. xlvi. (1890) p. 146. 



